


In Frost

by rukafais



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, Warcraft III
Genre: Gen, not enough for a tag yet, sylvanas is technically in here but, the chronology of this will skip around a bit dont worry about it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:27:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28103181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rukafais/pseuds/rukafais
Summary: Snapshots of days before, and days long past.Or: a marauding death knight, a tired lich, and a furious undead ranger go on the world's most infectious roadtrip. There is reminiscing, uneasy camaderie, and something that looks like friendship if you squint.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 10





	1. vigilance

**Author's Note:**

> I miss Warcraft 3 and I miss when Blizzard was good and not dead to me and Remastered was ABSOLUTELY terrible so I'm filling the empty hole in my heart with writing fanfiction

They are two weeks out from the destruction of Quel’Thalas when the question comes.

They’re at rest - as much as the Scourge _rests_ , because the undead don’t need to sleep - but the habits of a lifetime are hard to break. Besides, the lesser undead will only grind themselves to dust mindlessly if limits aren’t set on their motion, so they rest when their leader does.

Sylvanas stalks the outskirts of their lightless camp and refuses to join them. That seething, roiling rage is easy to feel through the connection he now shares with her - some result of a tenuous, possible blood-bond of being murdered by the same person, possibly, though he’s not sure if it’s only that. He suspects she’s looking for easy targets to vent her constant anger, and doesn’t even attempt to communicate with her. He supposes that once upon a time, if he’d been subjected to such indignities, he too would be angry.

“What do you even believe in?” Arthas says, suddenly. He’s been hunched over, presumably pondering their next movements, for some time now. Brooding like this is a common activity, especially when Arthas isn’t in motion, so he had expected this state of affairs to continue until it became tiresome and they broke camp and moved on.

This is _uncharacteristically_ contemplative for him, however. Kel’Thuzad eyes him carefully in case this is some kind of test of character - not on Arthas’ part, because for all his strengths as a tactician and a leader Arthas fails utterly when it comes to subtlety - but on the voice that calls them both, ever onward.

But Arthas actually appears to want his opinion on something so subjective, an equal rarity. (They have an understanding by now; Kel’Thuzad does much of the thinking, Arthas wades in to destroy the Scourge’s enemies. This does not require much heartfelt conversation between them. They spend most of the time in between jabbing at each other.)

“Not much,” the lich answers, at last, when it becomes awkwardly apparent that Arthas isn’t going to lose patience, as he so often does, and drop the question. Tonight is clearly exceptional. “Why do you ask?”  
  
Another awkward silence. The former paladin looks as if he’s been called to answer a particularly detestable question in class, and that alone tickles Kel’Thuzad’s sense of humor.  
For a moment, at least. Then he speaks again, and it’s not funny any more.

“I can still feel it,” says Arthas, like every word is an effort pulled out from some deep abyss. He supposes, for Arthas, who never likes to think about anything other than tactics if he can help it, it is an effort.  
  
“That _gap_. There’s something...missing. That I used to have. That I used to _believe_.”  
  
His hand twitches as if on reflex, running gloved fingers over Frostmourne’s hilt, gripping it tight, letting it go. It leaves imprints in the glove, and he suspects the cold flesh underneath as well. The motion is surprisingly distressing to watch.  
  
“This... _emptiness_. When does it stop?”

Kel’Thuzad had never spent a lot of time around paladins. The likes of them and the likes of him didn’t mix very much; he was never expected to be a battle mage. The Council rarely lifted a finger to meddle in the front lines, were not expected to dirty their hands with mundane tasks or matters. But even a child knew that paladins drew power from the Light, from some wellspring of faith.  
Perhaps it was that, then. Such things were hard to shake, the belief in something greater than yourself that could grant you such potent power. Though Arthas’ faith had certainly waned, perhaps the flame hadn’t yet guttered before he took up the sword and was transformed.

 _Or perhaps he just feels his soul missing,_ the lich mused. _Or a mixture of the two._

The silence is expectant. For once, Arthas is asking something of him that has nothing to do with what to kill next. Kel’Thuzad finds himself at a loss.

“I know not,” he says, at last. “I found little to believe in when I was alive. And faith grants me no powers in death.”

Belief doesn’t fuel anything about him. He simply is what he is, a being made of - and chained by - magic. But he supposes it’s different for paladins, even fallen ones.

“These wounds will heal with- time,” he continues, a hesitant attempt at reassurance. “The ache will- it will fade. It will become something you are used to. You will feel it less.”

 _Does_ he miss anything much about his old life? If he does, he’s locked it away, buried it deep. Revisits it only in quiet, vulnerable moments.  
His accomplishments as a mortal mage, any bonds he might have had (a scarcity), simple pleasures and fond memories. It all seems to pale and crumble away in comparison to his undeath, cold and vivid.  
He wonders if that was his doing, or the Lich King’s. He wonders if that even matters.

Arthas is still watching him. He wonders how much he knows or understands about him, now more than ever, when they are so closely linked.

“Was there....anything else you wished to ask of me, then?”

“No,” Arthas says, at last, fixing his eyes back on the ground. “Nothing.”

He seems a little more settled than before. Kel’Thuzad will count that as a good thing.


	2. a game of chess (I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the long road between the slaughter they enact, there is little entertainment except what you make yourself.
> 
> Or, occasionally, wrest from the dead hands of some unfortunate soul raised into mindless servitude.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lovingly dedicated to Fire/bluecanary, whose headcanons for Arthas inspired this two-part snippet, and to Echo, who has graciously put up with looking at most of my writing thus far.

He inspects his clawed, bony fingers, marveling at the magic of his own reconstruction. He never had much thought for what he would come back as, only that he would; he wonders what template had been dreamed up to create his body. It certainly didn’t come from him.

Well, perhaps some things came from him. The robes, the ornamentation. The chains, however...

The chains are a reminder. _Bitter, painful gifts_. That much he understands. But the rest...

Where _did_ such things come from, then? The Sunwell itself? The Lich King, so far away? Some ancestral memory, lost long ago? It’s a question that perturbs him enough for it to wholly occupy him, until the rasp of a familiar voice demands his attention.

“You. Lich.”

“I _do_ have a name, you know,” Kel’Thuzad says, turning leisurely. “Why don’t you _use_ it?”

“Why don’t I just _curse you with every breath?_ ” says Sylvanas, former ranger-general of Silvermoon and present maybe-general of the Scourge, because she’s one of the few undead with enough brains in her head to do so. “Don’t ask stupid questions.”

“But I do so _love_ stupid questions,” he answers, voice sing-song and more innocent than he’s ever sounded in his life _or_ death. “They get such _fascinating_ answers.”

She’s close enough to him to grab a fistful of chain and drag him to where she presumably wants him to go. It takes him by surprise enough that he lets her and doesn’t immediately react with a frostbolt to the face, and by the time he’s processed what just happened she’s already let go.

She grins, all teeth and bitter amusement. “Well. It looks like those chains are useful after all.”

“Don’t do it again,” Kel’Thuzad growls, straightening up and brushing himself off. “Unless you _want_ your head blown off.”

“Hah! As if you _could_.”

“Would you like to try it _right now?_ ”

“ _Are you done?_ ”

Arthas’ voice has the patience of a landslide waiting to happen, which is to say, not much. Sylvanas crosses her arms and simply glares; Kel’Thuzad, in contrast, turns much more quickly to the death knight than he did to Sylvanas.

“Did you have need of me?”

Arthas shrugs. “A little.” The boredom evident in his voice indicates that this is not exactly a matter of greatest urgency.

But then again, if Arthas was bored, he tended to wander off and find something to destroy, so in one sense it was urgent.

Something has the fallen paladin’s attention. Kel’Thuzad focuses on it, ignoring Sylvanas making derisive noises in the background, and realises with surprise that it’s a battered but serviceable chessboard, with its pieces similarly and surprisingly intact.

He wonders where it even came from, and then notes the bloodstains and burns. It’s likely one of their new, mindless footsoldiers had been carrying it - perhaps in a pack, or some such - and Arthas simply took it.

Well. Its former owner surely wouldn’t be missing it.

“I didn’t realise you played chess.”

“I haven’t in a while. But I’m good at it,” says Arthas, modest as ever.

Kel’Thuzad sits, or at least makes his best and least clumsy approximation of sitting. (It’s hard to sit without legs or a lower body, but he tries his best. Sylvanas laughs at his attempts, and he tries his best to ignore it and not think about sniping her with a bolt of ice at close range.)

“And I suppose you want an opponent?”

“I can’t play chess against myself.”

“Very well.”

Gods, how long has it _been_ since he’s played chess? A very long time.

(His peers had loved it, of course. Anything to make them look more intelligent. He’d never bothered to play by the rules out of sheer spite, and had cheated his way to victory in just about every match.)

He remembers the rules, at least. And surely it can’t be _that_ hard to put up a decent fight.

As it turns out, to his detriment and to Sylvanas’ significant amusement, it is. He can barely mount a defense at all before Arthas ruthlessly shatters it to pieces, reaping the tiny figurative lives of Kel’Thuzad’s pawns and pieces as effortlessly as he’d sweep across a real battlefield.

(In the middle of pondering a move, he glances at Arthas’ face. That intensity is something he rarely has the luxury of seeing - he can’t very well stare at him while in the midst of conflict - and so he takes the opportunity to study it now.

In that focus he sees the prince - the king - that could have been, locked against him in heated battle. There’s a kind of peace there that Arthas usually lacks. He feels a twinge of some strange emotion - pity? respect? - and casts it out of his mind.)

His resistance was meant to be token at first, mostly just to entertain Arthas to keep him from yet more unnecessary butchery, but now Kel’Thuzad is well and truly invested. It’s a matter of pride as much as it is respect for the man’s skill; he doesn’t like to be defeated, but he respects Arthas too much to do what he would have done to his peers and cheat his way to victory.

The matches go on, with Kel’Thuzad improving just by sheer volume of practice. What were easy victories for Arthas become back and forth struggles, a war in miniature playing itself out on a checkered battlefield. It’s a fascinating study of the death knight’s tactics, now that the lich can last long enough to actually study them; Arthas favours overwhelming sweeps of the board, robbing his opponent systematically of piece after piece with little to withstand him. There’s a certain elegance in the sheer efficiency of it, which surprises him to think; Arthas is generally the furthest thing from elegant.

Sylvanas, too, is invested despite herself. Her disinterest had gone from genuine to feigned, and then she’d dropped even that in favour of sitting to watch them battle it out. Perhaps there was little else interesting to do - she’d likely say as much, if asked - but she could have gone to brood angrily over her fate, her favourite pasttime besides needling him, and she hasn’t moved for a while now.

The day wears on into evening, and then into night. Kel’Thuzad finally concedes defeat, after being locked in a grueling stalemate for half an hour as Arthas harries his pieces with the patience of a hunter awaiting prey, looking for some bolthole to slip into.

“I believe I do better on real battlefields than ones made of wooden boards,” the lich says with a sigh, sitting back. “With you as my king, Arthas, I fare far better. This one,” and here he wobbles the titular piece, “is rather useless.”

The chessboard and its pieces go with them, when they break camp and leave. Kel’Thuzad makes sure of that.

(The first time he and Sylvanas talk about anything, without the impression she wants to take his head off for the interaction, is through the medium of the game, after all. Despite her entirely justifiable anger, their vicious demeanor towards each other, there’s something in that that he treasures. Despite everything.)


End file.
